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Friday, October 16, 2015

The Blog Wars X army submission deadline is fast approaching with little over a week left to finalise your armies. Tomorrow I'll be sending out the BWX event pack and a few other useful documents to help you make those last minute decisions. Thank you to everyone who's sent their list in early. I think I've checked all the ones I've received so far, so if you haven't heard back from me let me know.

I wanted to touch on a couple of things today that I've mentioned in previous posts but figured it was worth reminding people about now whilst they're writing their lists.

Army Selection
There were a few changes from BW9 to BWX (aside from going to numerals!). Most notably that you are now allowed to take any two detachments of your choice. There is no longer a restriction on double CAD or any other formation/detachment being taken more than once. That's assuming there aren't any official rule restrictions that would prevent you from doing so. I did this for two reasons. One to make an effort to embrace the army selection craziness that is 7th edition and two to make my life less of a headache when checking lists!!

Lords of War remain permitted although with some restrictions. There's a set list of allowed LoW and some that are restricted to one per army. Essentially the infantry ones can be taken alongside other Super Heavy/Gargantuan LoWs. Bear in mind that it was nigh on impossible to find the right wording to say this so that doesn't mean you can take two Logan Grimnars (he's still unique). What you can do though is take Ghazghkull and a Stompa if you so desire. Make sense? Good.

The only exception to the LoW restrictions are Imperial Knights who may be fielded in quantities of up to two per army.

Finally, as ever Forge World units aren't permitted and each army must include a Special Character as their "Hero" in the Primary Detachment.

Scoring System
The main aim of the BW scoring system is to make sure that each game is worth the same number of points. This hopefully minimises the impact of playing a particular opponent. Obviously there'll still be some rock-paper-scissors but particularly in the VP game you won't end up in a situation where you can only score a maximum of 5 VPs because your opponent has an elite army.

One of the problems people cite with the scoring system is that it doesn't reward victory enough. The previous system was based solely on raw VPs and winning the game was potentially less important. That was kind of the idea but on reflection it feels a bit wrong for someone who had one lucky big win and two losses to place higher than someone who fought hard to get three narrow victories. In the past I've used the old Open War system which assigned points to margin of victory and Matt used a similar system in his proposed, but postponed, Fluffageddon event. I'll be shamelessly stealing Matt's system and combining it with the BW scenarios. That means each game will be worth the same points but victory will be more important. It'll work as follows:

30 Tournament points for a win, with the victory point difference being 21 or more

25 Tournament points for a win, with the victory point difference being 11-20

20 Tournament points for a win, with the victory point difference being 1-10

15 Tournament points for a draw

10 Tournament points for a loss, with the victory point difference being 1-10

5 Tournament points for a loss, with the victory point difference being 11-20

0 Tournament points for a loss, with the victory point difference being 21 or more

Naturally there'll be players who score the same number of tournament points. In these cases I'll separate them by VPs scored and then their "goal difference". That will prevent any tie breaks unless somehow people score exactly the same and allow exactly the same number of VPs for their opponents!

Bonus VPs from stripping wounds or hull points from LoW will be recorded separately as bonus VPs which will be added to the VP totals but it will still not be possible to score more than 33 VPs per round (30 Primary + 3 Secondary). The same goes for bonus VPs from things like killing an Ethereal.

Comments/Questions?

Please either comment or email me with questions as soon as possible. I'd like to send the Event Pack etc out tomorrow so if I need to change anything significant now's the time to mention it.

Saturday, October 03, 2015

Well it's been a pretty slow couple of weeks for hobby progress. I haven't even posted for a fortnight!! Anyway, I'm posting today to mention that there's just one ticket left for Blog Wars X in a month or so. I'm incredibly happy to have sold so well for the "Winter" Blog War which traditionally doesn't see the same level of attendance as the Summer one. I've already started putting together the usual pile of prizes plus some surprise extras this time around! I won't be revealing those until the big day though.

So in the last post I was discussing some proposals for rule clarifications/amendments that I think will help prevent some of the nastier combinations that appear at other events. There was plenty of discussion in the comments section which is always nice to see and as a result I want to make the following final rulings. Please bear in mind, as I've said many times before, Blog Wars is supposed to be different from other events. I work hard to find a suitable balancing point that allows people to bring the vast majority of their favourite units without preventing others from feeling like they can field their favourites. Frankly it's an impossible task with the number of new units and rules that have been hitting us this year. I gave up trying to make everyone happy some time ago but hopefully the majority of people are. Anyway, these rulings will be fixed for BWX. That doesn't mean things won't change for the next event but I want to make these final rulings so that people know what to expect when writing their armies.

Invisibility - remains banned. If you roll it when generating powers you may roll the dice again until you get something else. Obviously you must take the first non-invisibility power you generate.

Re-rolled Saves - I'm sticking with my ruling that Invulnerable or Cover save re-rolls are only passed on 4+. That's still an 83% chance of passing a 3+ save with 4+ re-roll and 92% for 2+ with 4+ re-roll. Not quite so obscene but still powerful (basically the BW motto!). Armour saves may still be re-rolled as normal.

Best Save - this is the only one I'm going back on. In order to get a cover save the Ravenwing would need to Jink which (most of the time) has drawbacks. Therefore it only seems fair that they take what is statistically the best save. For example, against normal AP4 or above fire they would take their re-rollable 4+ save. Against AP3 or less they'd have to take their cover save anyway. Obviously against Ignores Cover AP3 or less weaponry they wouldn't get either! You get the idea.

Tau - the new codex will not be in use as there won't have been enough time. Same goes for the Stormsurge, Ghostkeel etc. As much as I'd love to see them in action I think there needs to be a cut off point for new units.

I hope none of these things piss people off too much. I'm really sorry about the Tau but it's just unfortunate timing on GW's part. Comments/criticism welcome as always.